The daisy children

I received this Advanced Reading Copy in exchange for an honest review. The Daisy Children is a novel based 1937 school explosion that killed many children in a rural Texas town. Many of the families reproduced within the year, replacing their lost sons and daughters. This is the fictionalized story of one family and four generations. The focus is on the women, their offspring daughters and the fraught relationships the mothers and daughters had and the secrets they kept. It begins in present day Boston where 4th gen Katie lives with her husband though she questions their future together. Katie's grandmother, 2nd gen, (whom she only met once) dies in TX and she is mentioned in the will. So Katie flies to Texas to attend the reading of the will. The chapters flip back and forth: from the grandmother growing up as a replacement child who could never live up to the sister who was killed in the explosion; to her child, 3rd gen, (who happens to be Katie's mother); and, to Katie herself as she seeks to resolve why these women had such dysfunctional relationships. The story is intriguing and I did enjoy the ending but I didn't think the writing was very good and I found myself getting lost between the generations and ancillary family that popped up here and there. But there is an interesting bit of history here and a story about “the ties that bind” us forever.